“ALL POLITICS ARE LOCAL.”
CHAPTER 16: SHEIKS UNITE
I FINALLY RETURNED TO RAMADI ON 23 AUGUST TO FIND THAT Major Chuck Bergman had magnificently commanded the task force in my absence. If it were up to him, I probably could have stayed on R&R a few days longer. Bergman and Major Dave Raugh quickly gave me a rundown of everything that had happened while I was gone. Unfortunately, it had been a brutal three weeks across the Ready First. Terrorists had attacked the brigade with an average of six IEDs a day, on top of the ever-present small arms attacks and the routine suicide bomber. The Ready First was now shifting its focus to eastern Ramadi, again heading into an area firmly under AIF control, while the Regulars also pushed east through the tribal area. On 6 August while patrolling in the Jazeera tribal region, the Humvee carrying Staff Sergeant Tracy Melvin from Alpha Company 2-6 Infantry struck an IED, killing him instantly. Melvin was one of the best squad leaders in the task force while we were in Kuwait, always demanding excellence from his men.286 The next day, Sergeant Roger Leach and Specialist Dustin Norwood from Team Dealer received relatively minor injuries when terrorists attacked their patrol in Tam’eem with and IED. Later that day, First Sergeant Aaron D. Jagger,287 Specialist Ignacio N. Ramirez,288 and Specialist Shane W. Woods289 from Team Cobra, attached to the Bandits, died when a deep-buried IED destroyed their vehicle as their patrol was returning to COP Spear.290
On 16 August, Staff Sergeant Jeffrey Loa, tank commander from Alpha Company 1-35 AR, attached to Task Force Regular, was killed by an IED during a dismounted patrol north of Ramadi.291 Staff Sergeant Loa was a great leader and warrior, and well loved by his soldiers. Two days later, Sergeant Marquees Quick from F Troop died in a grenade attack while conducting a tactical overwatch mission for the Ready First in downtown Ramadi.292
On 21 August, a suicide bomber attacked the Jazeera Police Station. The bomber ignited an aboveground two hundred gallon gas tank used to fuel the police station vehicles, creating an enormous fireball that burned the policemen and advisors alike. The advisor team at the station was devastated, with eight soldiers burned in the explosion. This time, the Iraqis refused to be intimidated. After deciding that the Americans were taking too long to extinguishing the flames, they entered the compound; put out the fire themselves, raised a large Iraqi flag in defiance, and headed out on patrol that afternoon.293
Within the task force, we were making progress. Team Comanche soldiers continued reaching out to the tribal areas by day, and hauling in terrorists by night. They also began assisting the Iraqi Highway Patrol in the operation of a static checkpoint in the tribal area designed to stem the flow of weapons smuggled in from Syria, as well as supporting the August recruiting drive at the Bezia compound. Also during this period, the Iraqi Highway patrol detained a high-level Al Qaeda emir.
Team Dealer’s census operations and targeted raids in Tam’eem were having success in lowering the violence. The enemy continued fighting back; attacking Dealer patrols multiple times a day with IEDs and small arms ambushes, but these attacks were not very effective. Luckily, the only serious injury during this period was Sergeant Nathan McCool, shot while on patrol in Tam’eem. I thought that we were possibly turning a corner in that violence-plagued sector.
Our efforts to push the Iraqi police in the al Horea station into expanding their presence past 5 Kilo were also paying off. The discovery of the blood-soaked Iraqi police body armor during the Blue Mosque raid seemed to have stiffened the resolve of the Iraqis, and now they were determined to get into the fight. The Al Qaeda jihadists recognized the new threat to their control of the population and sent a bomb-laden burnt orange Opel station wagon under the cover of small arms fire speeding towards the policemen as they moved to link up with Team Dealer for their first joint patrol in Tam’eem. The Iraqi policemen instantly recognized the threat and met the vehicle with a hail of gunfire, detonating the bomb before it could hit the heart of the patrol. The hastily planned attack did manage to wound a couple of Iraqi policemen, but with the support of Team Dealer, they beat back the enemy.
The Iraqi police had performed adequately in a terrible situation. More importantly, they came back to work the next day ready to fight again. Initially, I was impressed that Al Qaeda was able to launch a suicide bomber that quickly against the police, but soon I realized that in all likelihood, an enemy infiltrator betrayed the date and time of the mission. Still, we were making progress, and the Iraqi police were gradually establishing a presence in Tam’eem. The suicide bomber attack against the Iraqi police also validated my belief that Al Qaeda feared the Iraqi security forces more than they did Americans. The attack on the first day of a joint operation with the Iraq police was not a coincidence; the enemy could have attacked a Team Dealer Patrol on any day of the week.
Figure 25. The Iraqi police react to a suicide bomber’s attack during the first joint Iraqi police/Team Dealer patrol in Tam’eem. 10 August 2006. Courtesy TSgt Jeremy Lock. Click on the photo for bonus features.
Many U.S. leaders badmouthed the Iraqi security forces, often focusing particular scorn on the Iraqi police. I, for one, thought the young men who tackled an incredibly dangerous job were heroes. The Iraqi security forces in 2006 were not cowards; they simply lacked the skills, training, and leadership to be good at what they did, and needed much help. They also did not have access to a tenth of the resources available to Coalition forces. The police and the Iraqi security forces in general would fight beside us if we let them, but they were simply not ready to fight by themselves.
The options facing an individual Iraqi policeman were limited. He could decide not to show up for work. He could sit in his police station and wait for the impending suicide bombing, mortar barrage, or small arms attack on the station. Alternatively, he could venture out on patrol wearing a polyester mall-guard uniform with chicken-plate body armor strapped to his chest, with only the firepower support of a machine gun mounted on a tripod in the back of a Chevy Silverado, and wait for some terrorist to ambush him.
While out on patrol, the police were in constant danger. I worried about policemen falling out of the back of the pick-up trucks as much as anything else. We would never put an American soldier in that position. If they did manage to stay in the truck, the AIF could shoot them at any time from any direction. Beyond the danger an Iraqi policeman faced on the job, when he went off duty enemy gunmen could follow him home and attack his family. As a countermeasure, the Iraqi policemen typically wore ski masks to conceal their identities, despite the blistering heat. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out they were not cowards, but they were protecting their families by wearing the masks to avoid being recognized by the terrorists. American soldiers, on the other hand, were encapsulated in armored Humvees, Abrams tanks, and Bradleys, as well as wearing the latest in body armor, while our families were safely back in Europe or the States. The Iraqi police were a lot braver than many Americans were willing to credit. Lieutenant Colonel Walrath summed it up best when he said, “The Iraqis are the bravest where we are the strongest.”
Figure 26. Iraqi Police responding to a suicide bombing. 10 August 2006. Courtesy TSgt Jeremy Lock. Click on the photo for bonus features.
While I was eager to see the checkpoint at Al Anbar University and the police station at Al Horea as well as visit with Sheik Sattar, there was a pile of bureaucracy requiring my attention first. I did receive a call from Lieutenant Colonel Jim Dana, the commander of 2-6 Infantry. “Tony, we’re going to see the Commanding General here in Baghdad in a couple of hours. Please tell me that you didn’t call the defense lawyer a bag of shit?” Jim asked.
“Jim, absolutely not,” I assured him. “”I called him a fat bag of shit. We need to be accurate in these things.”
After a long pause, Jim replied. “Come on, man. You’re killing me.”
“It’s true Jim; he’s a fat bag of shit,” I said.
Then I tried to explain the inexplicable and inexcusable to Jim. I knew that battalion commanders should never tell subordinates, not even terrible defense lawyers, that they are any kind of shitbag, no matter how self-evident that truth might be. I finally gave up and had to settle for saying, “Jim, it had been a long day when it happened. And he still is a fat bag of shit.”
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I had absolute faith in my U.S. company commanders, and I knew they were doing what they were supposed to do, with or without me. The Iraqis, in contrast, needed a lot more attention. Sergeant First Class Roberts formed up the PSD, and we started our inspection. When we arrived at the Al Horea police station, it was still buzzing about the suicide bombing/gunfight they had been in a week prior, and there seemed to be a little more resolve in the policemen’s eyes, and a firmer purpose in their step.
We intentionally arrived at Sheik Sattar’s house after dark. I tried to go there during the hours of curfew so passing drivers would not see a stream of Coalition Humvees coming and going. We took care not to publicize how much the Bezias were aiding the Coalition Forces, though in all likelihood, we were only fooling ourselves. Every resident of Ramadi knew Sheik Sattar was supporting the Coalition. Despite a couple of three man checkpoints with overlapping fields of fire guarding the Bezia compound, Sattar’s life—and the lives of his family—were in constant danger.
Just before my leaving on R&R, we heard a rumor of Sattar and a companion sitting outside of a gas station on Route Mobile, when an unfamiliar Opel sedan drove up behind them. Sattar and his bodyguard drove off and drove around the block, pulling up behind the suspicious vehicle. The Al Qaeda gunmen in the first vehicle jumped out, thinking Sattar’s car was the remainder of the team planning to assassinate the sheik. As they approached the vehicle, Sattar pulled his chrome-plated .44, putting two rounds into each terrorist’s chest. Maybe the cowboy six-shooter was for more than show.
“Allah smiles upon me,” was all Sattar said when I asked him about the incident.
Occasionally, I would enter Sheik Sattar’s compound and see unauthorized PKM machine guns at the checkpoints. I knew he needed the automatic weapons for protection, since the enemy certainly would try to use the same weapon on him and his family; but the rules were clear, and I did not want another unit who just happened to be passing by to see the weapons and attack his compound. Our banter followed the same pattern every time:
“Sattar, those are mighty big AK 47s I saw driving in today,” I would declare.
Sattar would smile sheepishly. “If you give me two of your tanks, I will solve all of our problems by morning,” he would then reply.
When we arrived that night, Sheik Sattar was chain-smoking and pacing back and forth in his living room. I had never seen him this agitated. Sattar informed me that the Abu Athea tribe had brutally murdered Sheik Khaled of the Aley Jassim tribe. I remembered Khaled well from the conversation we had the night prior to the Al Anbar University operation. He had lived up to his promise to assist in recruiting policemen, and had been reaching out to his neighboring tribal leaders, trying to get them to reject Al Qaeda. For his efforts, the Abu Athea beheaded Sheik Khaled, keeping his body as an insult to his family, and were holding a female member of Khaled’s family hostage as well.
“Gather your forces and I’ll gather mine. Together we attack the Abu Athea to avenge Sheik Khaled and restore honor to his family by bringing back his body and the girl!” Sheik Sattar declared passionately.
“Sattar, this is the first I’ve heard of Sheik Khaled’s death. The Abu Athea are in my friend Colonel Walrath’s area, not mine. I must speak with him before I can do anything,” I explained, trying to buy some time.
The Lawrence of Arabia stuff had a limit, and there was absolutely no way I was signing up for an American-led tribal raiding party. Since Dan Walrath had been on the same flight back from R&R with me, I knew he was not up to speed on the events in the tribal region either. I tried calling him, but he was out checking on his AO just as I was. The best I could do was to set up a meeting with Sattar and Walrath for the next evening. At the time, I simply did not comprehend the significance of Sheik Khaled’s death. It is always tough catching up when you return from leave, and the very day I returned there was a game changing event in the security situation in Ramadi. As we were still trying to figure out the ramifications of the inter-tribal violence, Sheik Sattar canceled the meeting at the last minute.
At the time, the Ready First only considered six of the twenty-one tribes around Ramadi as cooperative to the Coalition, with twelve of them openly hostile. The remaining three were neutral, which more than likely meant they were open to getting U.S. contracts during the day, while attacking us at night. The Abu Athea tribe was openly hostile to the Coalition with long-standing ties to Al Qaeda. That tribal area was across the Euphrates in AO Regular, directly north of Sheik Khaled’s tribal area.
The following day the al Horea police station and the Jazeera police station in Task Force Regular’s AO looked like ghost towns. Except for a skeleton force defending the stations, virtually all of the policemen failed to show up for work. The explanation we received was they were all in mourning over the death of Sheik Khaled. There was either a cultural or a language misunderstanding with the term mourning. In Western culture, it suggests a time of quiet reflection and grief. Evidently, to the Iraqis, mourning meant putting a violent smack down on the Abu Athea tribe in order to get Sheik Khaled’s body back.
I remained committed to establishing the rule of law, and never condoned tribal justice, but at the same time, I understood how it could occur. Vengeance was an unpleasant fact in the Iraqi culture and many other cultures as well. When there was not a government to provide security and to address grievances, the tribes turned to the old ways. They were determined to get the sheik’s body back with or without the Coalition. We had left them no choice since, despite our best efforts, we remained unable to protect the population.
In the old west, the sheriff would put together a posse, deputize the boys, and go get the bad guys. Sometimes they would bring them in for trial, at other times they would just string them up from a tree in the name of justice. To me, this act of retribution was no different. I will never condone vigilantism, but when there is no other means of obtaining justice the people have two choices: either lay down and accept their fate, or stand up and take matters into their own hands.
At the time, I did not fully see the ramifications of the independent tribal action, but American inaction may have been the best thing that could have happened. It forced the tribes to realize that while we would be their allies, they were the ones who had to step up and take responsibility for their own security. While the reclaiming of Khaled’s body occurred outside the established governmental judicial system, it was well inside the tribal justice system. We had been asking for an Arab solution to an Arab problem, and now we had one.
Lieutenant Colonel Walrath received word that the tribes had recovered Sheik Khaled’s body. The disrespect that the Abu Athea displayed in holding the sheik’s headless corpse helped galvanize other tribes into rejecting Al Qaeda. The terrorists had overplayed their hand, and more importantly, the locals had begun to find their resolve. By now, we understood how to leverage the Sunni tribesmen into supporting the government and rejecting Al Qaeda by joining the Iraqi police. The killing of Sheik Khaled might have been the final push the tribes needed, but the resentment of the heavy-handed tactics of Al Qaeda and implementation of Sharia law had been building for months, if not years. The residents of Ramadi had realized that they made a mistake in aligning with the fanatical terror organization, and they needed the Coalition’s help to eject them.
At the same time as the tribes were stepping up, Task Force Conqueror continued to get a handle on how the enemy fought. Staff Sergeant Dave D’alessio, the Task Force Conqueror intelligence sergeant, figured out that Al Qaeda agents frequently concealed weapons and IED making material in the speaker boxes in the trunks of Opel sedans. (Apparently, Opel was the official automobile of the terrorists.) Captain Alden, First Sergeant Bolmer, and the men of Team Comanche were gleaning unprecedented amounts of intelligence from the locals, making nightly raids into Zangora, bringing in terrorists, gaining more information from their arrests, and then heading back out the next night for more of the same.
Team Dealer continued hitting houses around the clock in Tam’eem. Since the intelligence we received remained sketchy at best when we conducted a raid, we would also search the surrounding houses, trying our best to make it look like we were conducting our typical census operations and just happened to get lucky. While the locals were not happy about having infantry squads crashing through their front doors, they understood the reasoning behind what we were doing.
We were doing our best holding the western approaches to the city and had denied the use of Al Anbar University to the enemy, but we still were in a dangerous fight. Although we began to see success across the Ready First, Tam’eem was becoming even more dangerous. The combat outposts in Ramadi were forcing the enemy out of his safe havens and into Tam’eem.
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The mess hall at Camp Ramadi was the one place everyone went to get a break. Before passing through the grey Texas barriers protecting the facility, everyone, regardless of rank, helped his buddies by filling five sandbags for use at the combat outposts across Ramadi. Inside was an oasis from the war, as close to a piece of America as Kellogg, Brown and Root could buy. The omelets-to-order for breakfast, greasy cheeseburgers and fries for lunch and dinner, steak and lobster every Tuesday, were all welcome distractions and reminders of home. The six flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream available four meals a day made it even better. Here, for a few minutes each day, a soldier could get a mental break from the fighting, though a soldier from Charlie MED announcing, “We need O- Positive and B-Negative blood” would often break the momentary solace the mess hall provided.
Camp Ramadi had a walking blood bank, meaning that everyone who could stand on two feet was a potential donor, and when another soldier, Marine, or Iraqi needed it, it was the soldier’s duty to give it. I never heard anyone complain about having to give blood, nor did I ever hear the announcement repeated. Usually, it was just the opposite, with twice as many volunteers as needed. Troops would choke down the last of their chow, run next door and donate blood, and then head out on patrol. Everyone knew the value of Charlie Med, and understood that their buddies would give blood if they needed it. Doctor Joe Rappold told me it took fifteen minutes from the time he made the request of a corpsman to the time a warm bag of blood was flowing into the arm of a casualty.294
The surgical team was a blessing for all of us. Dr. Rappold served as the general surgeon, Dr. Tim Trainor as the orthopedic surgeon, and Dr. Zack Kitchen was the anesthetist.295 In addition, Charlie Med had a flight nurse, two operating room techs, a corpsman, and a couple of Marines just to help. They treated all comers. Soldiers, Marines, sailors, airmen, civilians, and even terrorists—it made no difference. Prioritization was by injury, not status. The medical care provided by the American Army has improved dramatically through every war our country has fought, and by 2006, military medicine had evolved to an unprecedented level. Top surgeons were now working on the forward edge of the battlefield; any closer and they would be operating on the back deck of a tank.
Captain (Dr.) Joe Rappold hailed from Philly, where he was born, attended high school, and graduated from Temple University with a degree in engineering. He served seven years in the United States Navy as a nuclear submarine officer before they sent him back to Temple to attend medical school. Rappold had seen more than his share of combat, with tours in Desert Storm, Somalia, and Afghanistan before arriving in Ramadi. He and his team treated hundreds of casualties in eleven months, with the wounded arriving by ground evacuation from one of the patrols. The surgeons would stabilize them, and then get them on the Medevac birds to the hospital in Balad.296
Whenever we had casualties, I went into the treatment area to talk with the wounded Conquerors. Afterward, Rappold gave me an assessment of their chances, and took the time to ask me if I was all right, something that I always found both strange, and somehow reassuring. Personally, I felt that something were to happen, as long as I got to Charlie Med breathing, then Doc Rappold and his team would be able to save me.
We did not realize it at the time, but we had Al Qaeda on the run. When I was an operations officer in the opposing forces at the National Training Center, one of the biggest lessons I learned was that it is very difficult to gauge when you are winning a battle. Figuring out when you were losing was easy: everyone was dead. Figuring out when you are winning was hard. Was your attack successful in penetrating the enemy’s main defense, meaning you were now home free or had you just gone through token resistance and were actually seconds away from driving into a trap where the enemy would hit you from the rear? It was the same in Ramadi. We were in a tough fight, and having success, but it was hard to tell if we were really making a lasting difference, or if the terrorists were just waiting for a better time to launch a devastating counter-offensive.
Across the Ready First, there were still only three police stations and really only three effective Iraqi army battalions, one each in Task Force Conqueror, Task Force Regular, and Task Force Bandit’s area of operations. The other Iraqi battalions, the Iraqi brigade, and the Iraqi division headquarters were still weeks away from being ready to operate with American forces, let alone function and fight independently. Everyone agreed that U.S. units should partner with Iraqi units, preferably both an Iraqi army infantry battalion and an Iraqi police unit. The Ready First staff, especially Lieutenant Colonel Lechner, worked feverishly moving Iraqi army and Iraqi police units throughout Ramadi in order to give each task force some semblance of an Iraqi presence. An American-only combat outpost was an easy target for the enemy’s propaganda campaign—proof of U.S. oppression of the Iraqi population—whereas a joint U.S.-Iraqi army combat outpost made it easier for us to show the population that we were there to protect them from the terrorists. The problem was there still were simply not enough trained Iraqi security forces to go around.
Jim Lechner and I were at constant odds over who controlled the Iraqi security forces and how to employ them. I felt that since Task Force Conqueror had facilitated the recruiting of the Iraqi police, and had the least amount of American forces, the recruits were ours to employ. In my mind, we had raised our own regiment just like the U.S. Cavalry of old. My plan was to have the Iraqi police secure the tribal region of Zangora, then 5 Kilo, and then move them into Tam’eem. Once Tam’eem was clear of terrorists, the police would be able to move into downtown Ramadi. I felt that the police would fight harder initially if they were protecting their homes and villages in the rural areas versus fighting in the foreign lands of downtown Ramadi.
Jim, on the other hand, recognized that each combat battalion in the Ready First needed Iraqi partners to add legitimacy to our operations in the eyes of the population. It is the higher headquarters’ responsibility to allocate forces and decide priorities, and that was exactly what Lechner was doing. At times the discussions between us became heated, sometimes devolving into shouting matches, but we would end up drinking sodas and smoking cigars in my office after reaching a compromise on how, when and where to employ the Iraqi police. Jim and the staff officers working with him performed magnificently in getting the necessary training and equipment to the Iraqi security forces so that they could get into the fight.